Sometime during the run-up to the 2008 election when then-Senator Barack Obama and then-Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton were in a Battle Royale for the Democratic presidential nod, someone here in Cincinnati had the brilliant idea to have an all-call for political posters.
As I recall, it was a multi-gallery event. Artists of all stripes designed and printed posters.
By far my favorite was a blood-red image of Clinton seated in front of a microphone at some Senate hearing or another — there have been so many in her lifetime — and she is giving somebody, an unseen interrogator, what for.
Head cocked to the side and her chin slightly up, Clinton’s gaze is fixed and she is serious.
She is stabbing her right index finger, punctuating some point; perhaps some lie.
In large white letters below the image reads: VOTE OBAMA.
I absconded with a handful of those posters printed on something akin to newsprint. I gave most away but kept three pristine ones for myself and I framed them.
They are hanging side by side by side on our bedroom wall.
The image and text are ironic enough. Add to that irony the fact that a white woman produced the poster and, well, the meaning is clear.
There’s a gang of us chicks who aren’t picking up the bullshit Hillary Clinton is putting down.
And don’t bring me that “glass ceiling/it’s her time” line.
Hillary Clinton is suffering so acutely from the Clinton Dynasty Syndrome she cannot see straight enough to come within the ZIP code of the right thing. She is looking lately — and by lately I mean ever since President Obama gave her the secretary of state post as a booby prize — like she can taste the Oval Office.
But somewhere along the route while she was Svengali-ing Bill in her (un)official role as his top aide, busting his balls over Monica Lewinsky but then staying with him in what’s got to be the world’s textbook version of a marriage of convenience and hurriedly finagling a New York address so she could run for Senate as a stepping stone to presidency, Hillary Clinton learned how to lie like the Big Dogs.
However, what she has not at all gleaned from her husband is charm.
Now in the wake of her personal email fiasco and the recent reports that the Clinton Foundation has been getting large donations from foreign conglomerates with close ties to their own governments (i.e. China), Clinton is set to be in constant explanation mode all the way up to the primaries.
Further, all this explaining — and surely there will be more fires to extinguish — will give (and has already given) the GOP plenty to run her over with. She will be distracted from valid talking points like ISIS and the spate of ISIS’s domestic recruitment tactics, protecting the Affordable Health Care Act from a GOP hatchet job and absolving herself, once and for all, from the blood bath that was Benghazi.
I have never been a Hillary Clinton fan or supporter and I was gobsmacked by the name brand black women, like the late Maya Angelou, who came out in support of her in 2008.
It’s not that all blacks have to support The Black Guy, either.
Gimme a break.
All that monolithism is boring.
Same goes for gender.
With Clinton, it’s just that she has not shown any virtue, no redemption, no contrition and no transparency.
Ever.
I am speaking now about Whitewater era and beyond.
Maybe when she was a mousey brunette with bucked teeth and thick glasses, she was more virtuous; but not now.
Even the way she has toyed with us for years now about whether she is running for president doesn’t signal strategy; it’s a sign of manipulation, of someone who needs to know for certain she can win the game before she will even think about taking the field. Meantime, we’re supposed to get behind her, throw our money into her coffers and get turned up wherever she turns up just because she is a woman named Clinton.
At this point, I’d be more interested in what Chelsea has to say about foreign policy, the military, the budget and the badly splintered Congress.
I am not a woman who falls in love with a woman over some sister/girlfriend jive; neither do I automatically hate every woman who walks into the room. I am an equal opportunity skeptic and my meter is going haywire on the subject of Hillary Clinton.
Who else can boldly flout the rules then blithely explain it all away in her own sweet time but a Clinton?
She took too long to speak up on Benghazi and she took much too long to get in front of this email kerfuffle, which could have been put to rest soon and easily if she hadn’t left the media and Sunday morning pundits waiting and flapping in the wind.
At the least, Clinton needs to take stock of her team before things get hotter than they already are for the 2016 race.
Fire some folks. Clean house.
If she does it in the midst of the race she will appear unsteady and vulnerable. Even I know that and I never even passed a political science class.
Here remains the main problem with Hillary Clinton’s standing as a Democratic nominee for president that will also be her greatest blessing: Who else among the Democrats stands out, has the war chest and has the stamina to last?
Although I’d love to see Joe Biden take a swing because he’s so unpredictable, he remains a late night punchline.
Stranger things have happened.
A little-known biracial guy with a funny name came out of nowhere and whipped ass and Republicans nationwide are still pissed about it.
Maybe there’s a brilliant bisexual Latina politician nobody’s ever heard of doing good work in a barrio who can emerge and shut Hillary down,
Can’t you just see Hillary waiting four more years?
CORRECTION: An earlier version of this story incorrectly stated that President Obama named Clinton attorney general. He actually nominated her for secretary of state.
CONTACT KATHY Y. WILSON: letters@citybeat.com
This article appears in Mar 18-24, 2015.